Conversations with Matt Isaacs

For three years, I forged relationships that are still the most important ones I have in my life. After those three years of classes, running live sound, collaborating on projects, playing shows, and volunteering at venues I left Belmont to move back to Georgia for personal and financial reasons. At the same time, a friend and I decided that if labels were failing new bands and artists, and that if there was no living to be made by just being a musician and nothing else, then we should do something about it. We co-founded Valinor Records, named after the Undying Lands to the West of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

I moved back to Atlanta with the intention of splitting our influence and reach between Nashville and Atlanta. The first projects we attempted to push were my college pop-punk/comedy band The Sales Associates and a Christian “Nautical Rock’n’Roll” band called Rusty Shipp. I had made friends with Rusty Shipp while volunteering at Rocketown and had played a few shows with them as a sideman. While in Georgia, I began interning at a small rehearsal and recording studio in Suwanee, and I brought Rusty Shipp down to record a debut EP, Hold Fast to Hope. I produced that EP with engineering help from the guys who ran the studio. After a year back in Atlanta the (in hindsight obviously toxic) relationship that was a big reason for my move imploded.

I very quickly realized I wanted to be back in Nashville with my friends and pursue music fully. I moved back in 2015 and continued to work with Rusty Shipp, producing a new single called “Sinking Scarabs”. At the same time, my friends and I began to form a new band called No, This Is Patrick! Inspired by late-night Taco Bell runs blasting the new at the time Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! record. With that album, we realized we wanted to make music like that. We loved the high energy and positivity but also the ability to be as heavy or as poppy as we wanted. I continued to work with Rusty Shipp during their first full-length album, Mortal Ghost. During that period No, This Is Patrick! went through a long period of band members coming and going, with myself and my best friend and second guitarist Sean Naples being the core members.

After the Mortal Ghost cycle, Rusty Shipp and I parted ways and I began to focus entirely on No, This Is Patrick! I felt and still feel that the band has infinite potential, especially once we finally found the amazing members that we have now. We released our first full-length self-titled album under Valinor Records and began work on a follow-up while we played as many shows as were within our reach. Our progress was of course slowed to a crawl when the pandemic hit and we worked on the new music mostly remotely. I realized that my strengths lay primarily in creativity and not in business, so I decided to prioritize No, This Is Patrick! above all else.

Now that Valinor Records had been just me alone for a couple of years I rebranded it as Valinor Productions. Now Valinor Productions is my way of collaborating with friends and peers as a producer, video editor, promoter, and more. During the height of the pandemic I also started a YouTube channel called No, This Is Mattrick! all about the kinds of music I love. I use this channel to shine a light on bands and artists that I think deserve much more attention.

That takes us up to today. No, This Is Patrick! is independently releasing our sophomore album The Light in the Black. So far we have released the first single “Good Times” with more singles to follow shortly!

It has been and continues to be a struggle. Balancing day jobs that pay less and less for more and more work, while trying to create and promote our art, something that takes seemingly more and more money as actual community becomes ever rarer within the music industry.

Social media is critical to have any chance of building a fan base, but social media apps and companies make it as difficult as possible to get your work out there. We’ve received copyright strikes on our own music dozens of times as well as algorithmically suppressed because we were promoting our own work.

That’s not even mentioning the toll being on social media that much takes on someone’s mental health.

No, This Is Patrick! is appropriately billed as a pop-punk band, because that is the core of our sound, but I don’t believe we sound like anyone else.

I think we blend those pop-punk roots with metal, hardcore, and progressive music in a way that no one else does. We agonize over every detail of each song because each one is a direct extension of ourselves.

Our plans for the near future are to continue rolling out the new songs, continue making fun content together to promote it, and hopefully, soon start playing live stream shows on Twitch/YouTube/TikTok.